July 1, 2009

I'm not sure how far down the rabbit hole we've fallen yet, but there is something undeniably creepy about these state-financed youth brigades that are springing up everywhere. A friend recently directed me to a YouTube video of a television commercial for City Year.

It's a disturbing and slickly edited commercial that presents specific images while a girl recites her dedication to change. Intercut with shots of kids all wearing the same uniforms and marching in step and chanting slogans are shots of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Well, if there is one thing that Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. did NOT represent it was the indoctrination of children into blindly serving the party line of an increasingly authoritarian state. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. dedicated their lives to standing up AGAINST the state through CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE.

Later in the commercial, as the girl's voiceover promises "..to never turn my back when things get tough..", we see a shot of the young man who stood in front of the tanks that were rolling into Tiananmen Square in 1989. The producers of this obscene commercial have managed to take a courageous man's unflinching DEFIANCE of the state and turn it into an advertisement for collectivism.

It's a level of propaganda that Joseph Goebbles would have been proud of.  

A fellow comedian was recently approached in New York City by three little girls in uniforms who were holding flags. They asked him, "Do you love your country?"

Fascism is always accompanied by maniacal nationalism. If you couple this youth brigade trend with a government that is printing up trillions of dollars, taking ownership of all the major industries, rapidly expanding military dominance, and cracking down on civil liberties, you don't have to be an historian to predict where we are headed. And the Department of Homeland Security has made clear on numerous occasions that resisting the government can be considered an act of terrorism.

Yes, YOU are the terrorist now.

The establishment of these cleverly designed youth brigades is another shot over the bough in a blatant civil war against individual thought, liberty, and everything this country was founded on. 

Dissent has always been the lifeblood of the American spirit. The Founding Fathers deliberately set the three branches of government in opposition to each other so that no one group could attain too much power. And now, just six decades after defeating the Third Reich, we watch our children goose-stepping in a subservient national movement of devotion to the Fatherland.

The jackboots are at the door, my friend. I hope you have a plan.

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre 

June 28, 2009

While driving down Las Vegas Boulevard last night I saw an ad for George Wallace's show called the "I be thinkin'" tour.

Maybe I should call my next show the "I be conjugating my verbs" tour.

On an entirely unrelated note, I would like to say that one of the truly wonderful aspects of not having access to television at home is that I'm not subjected to all the media piffle that has most certainly accompanied the death of an ostentatious paragon who shot his creative wad two decades ago and has since been aiming his carnal wad in a much more sinister direction. 

Thankfully, I've seen none of the coverage. I can only imagine the yawning cliche parade of banality and glorification that must be vomiting from every manicured, television news hack who secretly prances with glee at being temporarily relieved of his duty to investigate the conquest of America by a whoring gang of criminal bankers.   

I mean, what else needs to be said about a tragically Shakespearean imp who, during the years of his greatest achievements, succumbed to the seduction of power by building a multimillion dollar daycare center in his backyard for the purposes of entertaining his most lurid desires?

Many people seem to be mourning the death of the boy king who brought them all those marvelous memories, but that king died a long time ago. He was replaced by a crumbling, shadowed creature with a monstrous itch that could only be scratched with the fingernails of an innocent hand.  

Celebrity worship is at such a blinding level in this country that the rape of a child can be passed off as the mildly awkward eccentricities of a misunderstood man.

The cuntification of the American psyche is complete as we willingly play the part of Dorian Gray while television reflects the rotting state of our collective soul. 

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre

June 21, 2009

The End Of The Republic and What You Can Do About It.

Well, it was a great country while it lasted, but it's finished. The very entity responsible for the meltdown of the American economy is about to become more powerful than the U.S. Congress.

The present Administration (entirely staffed by financial lobbyists) is handing unlimited power over to the Federal Reserve, an unConstitutionally-created, privately-owned banking cartel that is under absolutely no obligation of oversight.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher Dodd put it well when he said that giving the Federal Reserve more authority "is like a parent giving his son a bigger, faster car right after he crashed the family station wagon." But it's worse than that. It's like the parent giving his son the car, the credit cards, the house, the deed to the land, everything.

This is why Thomas Jefferson was so strongly opposed to the establishment of a central bank. He knew that once private bankers were able to form corporations, artificially set interest rates, finance political parties, decide on monetary policies and print money out of thin air, the country would be finished.

And it is. 

We live in a dictatorship now. That's not hyperbole. That's a fact. The Federal Reserve is already unaccountable to Congress. The Administration's final plan, due to be released this week, will give the Fed control over the entire financial system of the United States under the guise of establishing new regulations to protect consumers from predatory lending.

The Federal Reserve, (I repeat) an unConstitutionally-created, privately-owned banking cartel, will now have the power to seize any company that it regards as a threat to its own agenda.

That's a dictatorship.

If you would like an idea of what this country is going to look like in a few years, go to your local airport and try to board an airplane. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) enforces its procedures in exactly the manner that the new owners of America would like everything to be enforced: "Stand in line. Take off your shoes. Let's see your ID. What's in the bag? This toothpaste tube is too big, we have to confiscate it. Don't make any jokes. You got a problem? Are you questioning our authority? Come with us, troublemaker. You're going to miss your flight today. In fact, we're going to put your name on this list of troublemakers so that you miss all your flights from now on." 

What can you do about it?

Get involved. Simply bitching about it in e-mails and social networking sites is NOT doing your part. That's just jerking off. This whole country has a chronic case of verbal diarrhea. And most people don't really give a fuck about your opinion anyway. They're just waiting for you to put a cork in it so that they can give you their opinions.

Unless you back your words with actions you're just another gasbag. Find out where your local city council meetings are being held and attend them. I'll be attending one in my area this Wednesday. Voice your concerns and find others who share them. Establish coalitions with like-minded people and begin the process of creating a powerful local citizenship that can eventually be formed into a statewide movement. 

We can win back this country, and we can do it WITHOUT an armed revolution. This federal government still only has the power that the individual states allow it to have.

The Campaign for Liberty is holding a regional conference here in Las Vegas on July 10-12 in an effort to strengthen local organizations, restore our Constitution, and reclaim this Republic for people who still believe in Liberty. I'll be there and I hope you will too.

Get involved or shut the fuck up.

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre  

June 15, 2009

I snapped this shot from my back yard last week. It was eleven minutes after five in the morning. I had been studying all night for a test, couldn't stay awake another minute, and was heading for bed when I looked out the kitchen window and noticed that the breaking sun was lighting up all the clouds from below. It looked like the sky was on fire.

I scooped up my little digital Sony, ran outside, and snapped a few shots quickly. The light was changing fast and the entire scene probably lasted 80 seconds. I was about to wake Nancy and share it with her but the whole thing was over by the time I reached the door. When I glanced back over my shoulder the sun had lifted just high enough to be blocked by a cloud, and it looked like any other overcast day.

It was a spectacular vision available to anyone who happened to be awake at 5:11am on that morning in Las Vegas, and looking at the eastern sky during that 80 second window.

Sometimes it feels like a particular moment was made just for you, as though the Universe decided to spill its full bounty into your lap while nobody else was looking. But that's just ego, something that religious people who think the Universe was designed with their interests in mind would believe. The truth is that magical moments are available all day long on this planet, and all you have to do is open yourself up to them. 

But the popular distractions of modern life have been devised to keep you from noticing these moments. Television producers and video game manufacturers don't get rich by showing you that everything required for happiness is already inside of you. They get rich by hypnotizing you and convincing you of the exact opposite. 

There is a line in Full Metal Jacket when Joker is writing in his notebook as he stands over a ditch filled with dead bodies that have been covered with lime. He writes, "The dead know only one thing. It is better to be alive."

When you are on your death bed you will not be wishing you had watched more TV. You will be wishing you had lived your life more fully.

Turn off your TV set, shut down your FaceBook account and throw away your video games. Get out of the house right now and breathe in some life. Your days are numbered.

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre

June 3, 2009

I never thought I would live this long. The way I was conducting my life in my 30s almost seemed to guarantee that I would end up floating face down in an Amsterdam canal with a wrench sticking out my back, a wrench with the fingerprints of a Moroccan drug dealer who finally figured out which squat I was holing up in.

And how is it that those crazy, evil fucks at the cockfights in that desperate, rank alley on Bangkok's west side never decided to just drag me into a corner, slit my throat, take my money and feed me to those snarling dogs in the cages?

And when that pilot misread his map and landed our helicopter in a completely unprotected area of a particularly hostile region in Afghanistan, how is it that not one of those angry looking Afghan fighters who were standing around holding AK-47s decided to simply open fire on us?  

Every time I think of an incident when I should have been killed, I suddenly remember another. How about the time Vasco and I chewed up a handful of mescaline, shot nine holes of golf on a closed golf course in below-freezing weather, then, in a true Gonzo tribute to our hero, chugged the better part of a bottle of Wild turkey, got in my car, and drove 100 MPH up the Meadowbrook Parkway in the middle of the night, wearing sunglasses and giggling about how neither of us could even see the road?

Some would say I'm still alive because god must have a special plan for me. And I could believe that if I were still five years old and the thought of an invisible man in the sky with nothing better to do than fiddle about with the petty exploits of six billion selfish pricks sounded like a plausible construction of the universe. It seems far more likely that life is random and cruel and wildly unfair, and sometimes good-hearted, thoughtful, caring people, like my friend Dave, drop dead walking across a parking lot while inconsiderate, drunken, jabbering assholes like me crisscross the planet screwing hookers and wearing ignorance like a goddamn badge of honor.

It's forgivable and even somewhat romantic to experiment with mind altering substances when you're in your 20s. But if you're in your 40s and you're still getting drunk or high, you're just an addict. Your credentials for rebel-hood expired a long time ago. You just haven't pulled your shit together yet. And you're still running away from something. You may have read all those books that delved so deeply into the idea of enlightenment, but if you're still getting fucked up, you never applied any of that truth to your own life. It took me so long to realize that getting drunk and getting high was a sad attempt to reach back into my adolescence, to rekindle that irresponsibility of youth. 

Hunter S. Thompson once pointed out that by making a beast of yourself you can take away the pain of being a man, and he was right. It's a cowardly act.  

But I'm two years sober now and all that bullshit is behind me. I live with the girl of my dreams, I'm back in school getting my culinary degree, and I've never been happier in my life. I don't know how I managed to live almost a half century but here I am. The finest course of action for me now is to figure out how I can be of the most use to my fellow human beings, how I can ease their suffering, and how I can become the best person I can be.

You can tell me that my awakening is all part of a master plan created by an invisible man in the sky if you want, but that's an insult because it takes away the credit I deserve for having pushed myself to this point. Life is random and cruel and wildly unfair but I'm still standing, and I got here not because of the drugs and alcohol but in spite of them. 

Life is short, but it's a fuck of a lot longer than I thought it would be.

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre

January 11, 2009

"You know Deeter?"

"Deeter?"

"The guy with the haircut."

"Oh yeah, Deeter, uh huh."

"Don't like him?"

"No, he's OK, it's just, how much Molly Hatchet trivia can you listen to?"

"Yeah, what's that all about?"

"I don't know, he likes Nascar too so he might have had a head injury."

"Well, that would explain the haircut."

"I asked him what his favorite movie of all time was and he said The Paper Chase."

"So?"

"The Paper Chase? Are you kidding me? Have you ever seen it?"

"Yeah."

"Come on, favorite movie of all time? The fucking Paper Chase? What about Casablanca? The Godfather? Citizen Kane? Road House?"

"Road House?"

"How could anyone pick The Paper Chase as his favorite movie of all time? What about Sunset Boulevard? All About Eve? The Shawshank Redemption?"

"Did you say Road House?"

"I mean, what's the plot of The Paper Chase anyway? Self centered law student porks the professor's daughter and discovers that academic achievements are meaningless?"

"Yeah, I think that's it."

"Goddamn twaddle. At the end of the movie, Timothy Bottoms is on the beach and Lindsay Wagner brings out an envelope that contains his final grade, and rather than open it he makes a paper airplane out of it and throws it away, unopened, the message being that it's just a piece of paper, that the things that really matter in life don't come in an envelope from some fat prick at Harvard who's been tenured."

"John Houseman."

"But check it out. The scene right before that one shows the fat prick.."

"John Houseman."

"..grading Timothy's paper and giving him an A. Well, if the real message of the movie is that grades don't matter, why does the director show us the grade? Why is it important for us to see that he actually got an A? Can't we be just as indifferent about the final grade as Timothy Bottoms is? Isn't that the point? But he shows you the grade. You don't think that's insulting? Isn't the director telling you that his fictitious character is more emotionally evolved than you are? Fuckin' douche."

"Easy, dude."

"No, fuck him. I'm not taking shit from some asshole director who thinks the figments of his imagination are more mature than I am. I'm gonna google his address and go kick his ass."

"Yes, that'll show him who the mature one is."

"Fuck you too."

"And maybe the two of you can watch Road House together."

"OK, spooge face, what's your favorite movie of all time?"

"The Treasure of Sierra Madre." 

"Never saw it."

"Well, you wouldn't like it. No shirtless, homoerotic, Patrick Swayze scenes."

"Get off that pedicab and I'll show you who the fag is."

"Practicing your maturity again?"

"None of this shit has anything to do with The Paper Chase anyway. It's a bullshit choice."

"No, it's not. You asked him what his favorite movie of all time is, not what the best movie of all time is. Wait, what's your favorite movie of all time?"

"2010."

"Wow."

"What?"

"Dude, that movie is beyond stupid."

"Fuck you, you just don't get it."

"What's to get? A garbled script about a joint Russian/American space program as a lame attempt at a metaphor for superpowers meddling in central American conflicts?"

"It's a science fiction masterpiece."

"It's a piece of shit. The fucking Jetsons made more sense than that film. And it's a continuity nightmare. Here, I'll give you a glaring example. Remember when Roy Scheider is explaining to the Russian chick how power from both ships could be used to get them out of there? He floats two pens in the air like there's no gravity on the ship."

"Well, they're in space, asswipe."

"But everything else in that movie shows that gravity aboard the ship is just like it is on Earth, people walk around normally, they set a cup on the counter and it stays there. But when he wants to float a couple of pens, suddenly there's no gravity on the ship. What the fuck is that?"

"They didn't know that much about space back then."

"What are you, retarded? 2010 was released in 1984 and it's the sequel to 2001 which was released in 1968 and had loads of antigravity scenes. What, did Peter Hyams get halfway through the filming of 2010 and go, 'Oh shit, we forgot about gravity. Here, Roy. Float some pens while you give this speech.' How do people keep their jobs in that town?"

"You're just nitpicking."

"Nitpicking? Adhering to the laws of gravity is nitpicking? Look, take your gay porno classic, Road House.."

"It's not gay."

"Yeah, keep splashing about in your puddle of denial, Packy McFudge. Anyway, imagine if during one of those bar fights Patrick Swayze started floating in the air like a fucking balloon. You wouldn't have a problem with that?"

"Road House doesn't take place in space."

"Well, you're wrong about that, but here comes Deeter. Let's ask him. Hey, Deeter! Come here."

"What's up?"

"Remember in The Paper Chase when John Houseman is giving that speech about how he is going to turn them all into lawyers?"

"Yeah."

"If he had started floating in the air right then, wouldn't you consider that an unreasonable suspension of believability?"

"I would consider it an unreasonable suspension of weight."

"And what's the gayest film Sam Elliot has ever been in?"

"Road House."

"Your honor, I rest my case."

Copyright 2009 John Bizarre